Editing Beguiler (section)

==Making Beguilers Work==
By itself, beguiler makes a pretty decent scout/"face" class. The real question in picking between the bard and the beguiler is if you need more party-wide support or more situational support. Bards can boost everything everyone does in combat, and provide backup healing as needed, but they are capped at 6th-level spells and while they are slightly more useful in melee, they'll always really be more of a support class than anything.

Beguiler, by comparison, does very little for the party in terms of buffs or heals, but they can perform a huge variety of situational needs. That's because they can spontaneously cast from a full list of spells at each spell level, a level of variety that even sorcerers lack without items. Granted, sorcerers can use far more wands, staves, and scrolls than a beguiler - all of the wizard/sorcerer spells are on their list, but a beguiler is limited to what was listed in PHB2. The flip side to that is, beguilers have UMD, which allows them to use any items they want if they are good enough on the skill check.

So if you pick beguiler, you're doing it to be very proactive and look for situations where you have the right skills and spells to overcome a challenge without the rest of the party even breaking out into initiative rolls. They aren't exactly a "battlefield" controller, but the beguiler is very good at locking down individual threats in a pretty impressive variety of ways: diplomacy, mindfucking with illusions and enchantments, or just going for a knockout with various abilities.

There is a weakness to beguilers, though: mindless foes like constructs and undead. These guys are immune to your best mind-affecting stuff. That doesn't mean you're totally screwed, though. Against melee-oriented stuff, just use items with UMD to zap them, and against casters help with shutting down their spellcasting. Being mindless may actually render a foe ''more'' vulnerable to illusions however, as they can't make basic conclusions like "that wall that just appeared is an illusion" short of actually touching the illusion.

So, you can stick with beguiler 20 and get some mileage out of them. But what if we want to branch out and prestige?

By and far, one of the best options for a beguiler is go with an Unseen Seer build (courtesy of Complete Mage).  You should dip rogue 1 to pick up sneak attack that will improve in Unseen Seer, but you can dump trapfinding for a more useful ACF. If the DM will let you take Poison Use from Drow of the Underdark (there's nothing specifically saying those ACFs are "only" for drow), that might be a great tool in the early and mid levels, or see about taking Mimic from Exemplars of Evil for a once/day ''disguise self'' (useful in a pinch in several places, if you're creative). If you're playing Eberron, take a changeling rogue as your first level and get a bazillion skill points as well as the amazing abilities of Social Intuition (which makes almost all of your social skill rolls way better/easier). Shit, if your DM lets you play a changeling in other settings, go for it there, too; this one ACF is amazeballs.

Anyway, after that one level of rogue gets you some sneak attack, go full Unseen Seer. As soon as you get advanced learning there, take the spell ''hunter's eye'' from PHB2 and enjoy doing unseemly amounts of sneak attack on command. Anything else is pretty much icing on the cake; find divination spells from ranger or assassin lists that help you do more damage, or bypass various kinds of defenses (especially on constructs or undead). Guarded mind is a great ability, but don't forget that ''mind blank'' is always a better effect when you can get it.

Oh, as a side note, when you get to arcane caster level 5th, dip Mindbender. Telepathy is always made of win, and it's ten times more important if you're the party "face" or scout. This is especially true if you take the Mindsight (Lords of Madness) feat, which makes that telepathy into blind sense. Beguiler 5/Mindbender 1/Beguiler 14 is considered a solid build in its own right, as the dip delays Advanced Learning so it lets you pick higher level spells.

Finishing out an unseen seer build is a tricky debate. Abjurant Champion is great for the combat-oriented stuff you can do with it, including dispelling enemy spellcasters, buffing your own combat abilities by dumping spell slots, and it even gets semi-decent skills. Arcane Trickster is considered a viable go-to for this build, but you're looking at being more skill monkey and less combat skirmisher (though you do get a couple more sneak attack dice). Fatespinner is very interesting, indeed: it only loses a spellcasting level at the end, so you'll get your 9th-level spells first, and it actually has some very good buffing/debuffing mechanics that could be <s>clutch</s> '''stop trying to make clutch happen, it's never going to happen'''. Nightmare Spinner looks kind of cool, but mechanically sucks; anything past CR 15 is going to laugh at your attempts to scare it to death, especially undead and constructs you can't hurt that way. Magical Trickster or Uncanny Trickster make good dips, the latter one especially for skill points and bonus skill tricks, but don't mix the two up; pick one or the other, or you'll never get your delicious 9th-level spells.

For feats, you have a few choices available. When you get +3 BAB, take Arcane Strike to help your sneak attack ability more, as well as to help you facing constructs and undead: you can dump spell slots right into melee attack and damage. Draconic Heritage feats open up some additional abilities if your beguiler spells aren't as useful, and being able to do a breath weapon for energy damage is one of the few ways to get such an ability if you don't otherwise have it, plus some of these draconic feats will add to your spell list. Versatile Spellcaster is a great idea, since you can throw more high-level spells with it, vital in fights against enemy spellcasters. Even a feat as simple as Skill Focus (Use Magic Device) can actually be a huge benefit if it means you can never fail a UMD check at a critical moment.

For items, the same flexibility you saw in prestige classes and feats applies here. It is tempting to make a beeline straight for traditional rogue stuff like rapiers, daggers, etc.  Fuck that. Instead, you need items that let you pretend to be fifty different things. So what you want is either a custom-made runestaff (Magic Item Compendium), or just get the ''runestaff of power'' straight up since it has that awesome smite ability and the +2 luck bonus. Throw in a wand chamber (Dungeonscape) and add a ''wand of nerveskitter'' so you can get yourself a +5 bonus to initiative (assuming you make the UMD check), or a ''wand of wraithstrike'' to hit incorporeal assholes. Use ''eternal wands'' or the regular ones to cover spells you could really use at odd moments or just a few times a day, like ''prestidigitation'', ''endure elements'', ''unseen servant'', etc. If you can afford them, runestaffs are really the best way to burn off spell slots to do more useful things, but you need a way to carry them around, such as an ''Ehlonna's quiver'' or a ''Heward's handy haversack'' (both of which are more desirable since retrieving the runestaff won't be a hassle or trigger an attack of opportunity). The Rainment of the Four from (Magic Item Compendium) is another option for expanding your casting options, letting you convert spells into Magic Missile, Fireball, Freedom of Movement and Teleport.

The ''rod of shadowblending'' from Complete Mage is a godsend: you can convert ''minor image'' to ''shadow conjuration'', and ''major image'' to ''shadow evocation''. It only works 3 times a day, but it lets you get access to those spells a full level lower than normal. ''Ring of telekinesis'' is always good for a variety of purposes. If your DM actually lets you buy a ''psychoactive skin of Proteus'' as soon as you can afford it, then get it, because on-demand ''metamorphosis'' for 7 minutes at a time is insane. Find a good source of indefinite flight, be it carpet, cloak/wings, or whatever.

If [[Dragon Magazine|Dragon Compendium]] is allowed, you qualify for bloodline feats. These give you access to an extra spell of each level at the cost of losing access to certain categories of spell. While a turn off for the Sorcerer they were intended for, your spell list is narrow enough you have few if any of the prohibited spells anyways.

The bottom line, no matter what prestige class, feat, or item you take, the beguiler works best by being able to change things up as the situation develops. Brute force is not always the solution to a situation, and changing the scenario on the DM with various tricks can be more useful than simply annihilating everything with raw power.

{{Template:D&D3-Classes}}